Angel Isle (6 page)

“In what way famous?” said Fodaro.

“He could control time with it. I’ll come to that in a minute. Anyway, Tilja told him about a magician called the Ropemaker they’d met on their journey. Faheel decided he was the one he’d been waiting for, but they looked at a sort of magic table he’d got and saw that the Ropemaker was in the palace at Talak and just about to be made into a Watcher. So to stop that Faheel used the ring to hold time still for the whole Empire while he and Tilja were carried up to Talak by this roc and he destroyed the Watchers. But before—”

“One moment,” said Fodaro. “‘He destroyed the Watchers.’ Does your story say anything about how he did that?”

“Yes, but it makes even less sense than anything else. Everything got bent out of shape. There were a lot of towers. They were all straight if you looked at just one of them, but they weren’t straight with each other. Something far off looked bigger than something nearer. Shapes didn’t fit together with themselves. In the end the sky came forward until it was inside out and swallowed the Watchers up. And if you know what any of that means you’re welcome to it.”

Fodaro was staring at her, oblivious to her outrage. Benayu in turn was staring at him with his mouth half open in astonishment.

“As it happens, I do know what it means,” said Fodaro slowly. “It is unbelievable, though not in the way you think. Anything else you can tell me about it…?”

“I don’t think so. Maja? No, we both know the same version, but Ribek’s is a bit different in places. You’ll have to ask him when he wakes up. Shall I go on?”

“Please. So, having destroyed the Watchers Faheel gave the Ropemaker the ring?”

“No, because before he could do that another magician who wanted the ring—he was one of the secret ones—Tilja called him Moonfist—he took Faheel by surprise and nearly killed him, but Tilja managed to use the ring to stop time again and get him back to his island. Then before he died he gave Tilja the ring to take to the Ropemaker.

“They had a lot more stu—I’ve got to stop saying that—they had a lot more adventures before they found him, of course, and he gave them the power to seal the Valley off again and sent them home. Tahl and Alnor couldn’t go through the forest because they were men and the sickness was back, but they had a tiresome old mare with them called Calico, and the Ropemaker put a couple of roc feathers—the ones I just showed you—onto her shoulders and turned them into wings, so that she could fly them home. And I think he actually managed to hide the Valley completely this time. I spent six years out on the other side of the desert among the warlords, and nobody had any idea it was there….”

“One moment,” said Fodaro. “There were magicians there, among these warlords? And magical objects?”

“Yes. Why? Magic didn’t work so well out there, but—”

He interrupted her with a gesture and glanced at Benayu, who nodded.

“Only a minor puzzle,” he said. “Later, perhaps. Please go on. Nobody among these warlords knew of the existence of the Valley….”

“That’s right. I don’t think anyone in the Empire does, either. In the old days, before the Ropemaker, the Emperors kept trying to send armies through the forest to recapture what they called their Lost Province—that’s in the story—so they must have known about it then, but I’ve never heard they’ve tried anything like that since.

“But the magic must have stopped working now because it was only supposed to last for twenty generations and they’re up. My family kept count, and my mother always told me I might be the one who had to go and look for the Ropemaker and ask him to renew the magic. I couldn’t stand it. Why me, for pity’s sake? I never wanted anything to do with any of it in the first place. I thought it had ruined my life. So I ran away, and that turned out even worse, so as soon as I got the chance I ran back. So there I was, looking at the ruins of my old home, when I found the feathers among the ashes, and I realized that all this had been planned somehow, long ago. I’d even picked up an old horse to put the wings on, and there was Ribek limping up the road. And at that point Sheep-faces turned up in their airboat looking for us. Ribek says that no one had ever seen anything like that in the Valley before. Which shows that the Sheep-faces had only just found out the Valley was there, and—”

“Sheep-faces?” said Benayu. “They’ve got to be the same as the Pirates, haven’t they?”

“It sounds like it,” said Fodaro. “I want to know more about this ring, as well as anything you can tell me about the destruction of the Watchers. I’ve heard rumors about that, as a matter of fact, but I’ve never heard about anything like the ring, not even a rumor. But you tell us about your Sheep-faces first. This may be more immediately important. What do these airboats look like?”

“I’ve drawn you one,” said Saranja.

She’d been scratching away at her picture all the time she’d been talking. They studied it while she told them about the Sheep-faces.

“Yes, they’re the Pirates all right,” said Benayu. “That explains a lot. I wonder if even the Watchers know all that.”

“Watchers!” said Maja. “But Faheel…”

“Destroyed the ones he had originally set up, just as Saranja has told us? Indeed he did. But magic is wild, dangerous stuff. All sorts of evils follow its uncontrolled use. The Ropemaker was forced to set up some kind of a system to replace the Watchers. He built in safeguards and for a while it worked well enough, but then he vanished, no one knows where, and over the centuries his system became perverted, just as Faheel’s had done, though in a different manner, and then people started to call them the Watchers again….”

“That’s what you were worried about,” said Saranja, “that they might have seen us arrive on Rocky?”

“Yes, but if they had they would have been here by now, I think. It depends how much of the magical impulse Jex managed to absorb. That’s one of the things he does.

“Where were we? The Pirates. Well, some of our coastal cities have been subjected to raids by a swarm of Pirates using airborne craft, Saranja. That’s all anyone has been officially told. We haven’t been told, for instance, how widespread these attacks have been, nor that as well as the usual destruction and looting that Pirates have historically gone in for, these ones seem also interested in suborning or kidnapping magicians for some purpose of their own. I needed Jex to tell me that. It’s been going on for thirty-odd years now, and emergency measures are in place. These include the central licensing and conscription of first-and second-level magicians, who have hitherto only required local licensing, in order to defend the Empire—in fact a complete crackdown on all unauthorized magic, which is something the Watchers have long been waiting to put in place, and will now have widespread popular backing in a national emergency. That’s why Benayu and I are here—not just to escape the conscription, but to find means to resist it, and in the end, perhaps to overturn the whole system of Watchers.

“Furthermore the Ropemaker has disappeared, just as Faheel did, and now here you come like your ancestor Tilja to find him, and help him to destroy the Watchers and find his successor and restore the world to its natural order for another twenty generations.”

He seemed to have relaxed enough to be amused by the notion, and Saranja’s uncooperative glare.

“Where do the Pirates fit in with all that?” said Benayu.

“I have no idea. Perhaps Jex will tell us when he wakes and is fully back here.”

“Your friend’s just coming round, Saranja,” said Benayu. “I’ll get you some clean bandages. There’s something nasty in that cut still, under a sort of flap near the top on the left.”

Maja looked across to where Ribek lay by the stream. As far as she could see he hadn’t moved but now he yawned and stretched contentedly and sat up.

“I’ll look,” said Saranja as she rose.

By the time Benayu returned with the bandages Ribek was on his back again, his eyes closed, his face gray-white and covered with sweat. Saranja was on her knees beside him gently using her thumbs to press the wound closed. Blood dribbled down his calf.

“Thanks,” she said, without looking up. “Cut me a few small squares for swabs, will you, Maja, then a soft pad, and then the longest strip you can make, about a handsbreadth wide, and slit the end a foot or so down the middle. That was hell for Ribek, but worth it. I think I got all of the muck out, but the bitter-bark will take care of anything I’ve missed. He’d be in a fever without. Now, tip a bit of it onto the squares and squeeze them out and hand them to me one at a time. The same with the pad, and then while you’re waiting roll up the bandage, starting with the slit end.”

She settled to work. Benayu went back to Fodaro and they started talking earnestly together. Maja was holding the pad ready for Saranja to take when everything changed. She cried aloud and was almost knocked sideways as the familiar quiver trembled across the mountainside. Rocky neighed as if facing an enemy, the sheep scattered again, bleating, and the dog raced to bring them back. By the time she recovered Benayu and Fodaro were standing, their faces tense as they stared out toward the southeast. Almost at once they fell into what looked like a furious argument, all the fury on Benayu’s part, Fodaro grim and anxious.

“Any idea what this is about?” said Ribek. “Did they tell you anything while I was asleep, Saranja?”

“Lots, but not about this. But whatever it is, it’s urgent. These Watcher people are coming or something. Let’s get this done with. Bend your knee, if you can. Now put your hands where mine are. Right. Now…”

They had finished, and Ribek was standing shakily, leaning on Saranja’s shoulder, when Benayu came hurrying back. His face was working, and at first he could barely speak for grief and anger.

“You’ve…you’ve got to go,” he said. “Can’t explain. No time. Straight down. See that tall pine at the bottom? Bit to the right of that there’s a track. Down there till you come to the drove road. Right there. Three miles on, there’s a bridge with a village on the other side. Wait in the trees till you’re sure there’s no one about and then hide under the bridge. I’m bringing the sheep. When you hear the sheep bell coming, one of you come out and wait in the trees with Maja. I’ll tell you what to do next. If I don’t come, wait till it’s almost dark, then Maja must hold Jex in her hand and Saranja hold her feathers just in front of him and breathe gently across them into his face. With luck he’ll wake up. If he does, do whatever he says. If he doesn’t, don’t try to help by saying the name. Just do whatever you think best. Here, Maja. Hang him round your neck, and sleep with him under your pillow. He may be able to shield you a bit.”

Before Maja had time to look at what he’d given her he had turned and was whistling to the dog.

It was a small amulet of some pale mottled stone, remarkably heavy for its size, carved to the shape of a squat lizard. There was a ring on its spine with a chain through it, allowing her to hang it round her neck.

“I’ll help Saranja saddle Rocky,” said Ribek. “See what you can find by way of food, Maja.”

She hurried back toward the cedar, where she found Fodaro stooped over Saranja’s drawing of the airboat with a twig in his hand, apparently scratching what looked like magical symbols above it.

“Is it all right if I take the basket?” she said. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

“No. Join you when I can. Tell your friends to look after the boy. He matters, not only to me. Don’t let them hang around. I want you well along the drove road before anything happens.”

“We’re just going. Thanks for the food, and good luck.”

Fodaro grunted, but didn’t look up.

Saranja was helping Ribek up into the saddle by the time she reached them.

“Well done,” she said. “Pack it into that saddlebag…. Right. Up you go, too.”

Maja grabbed hold of Rocky’s mane as Saranja took the bridle and started down the slope at a steady jog-trot.

Half way to the trees they passed Benayu and the dog, herding their flock in front of them. The clank of the bellwether’s bell seemed extraordinarily loud in the oppressive silence. Benayu’s face was expressionless. He gave no sign that he’d seen them go by.

CHAPTER
3

I
t was cool beneath the bridge. Reflections from the late afternoon sunlight rippled across the masonry of the arch above them. The river was low after a long summer. Rocky stood midstream, swishing his tail at flies. The three humans rested on boulders that winter floods had piled against the buttress, Saranja brooding, Ribek listlessly trailing his fingers in the current, and Maja quietly watching them. There was magic coming from both of them, she realized. Ribek was just listening to the water again, but Saranja was different. It was the same thing she’d noticed earlier on—not something she was doing, something that was being done to her. Perhaps it was the same thing Fodaro had started to ask about, a bit of magic she’d found among the warlords. But she hadn’t told them anything about it. That wasn’t like her.

“There’s a strange hawk over the woods,” said Ribek suddenly. “It wasn’t there this morning.”

“Nor were we,” said Saranja. “How…? Oh, the river told…”

Maja didn’t hear the rest of it. Something was happening to her, a sudden intense unease of the spirit, like nausea in the body, not slowly infecting her but suddenly there, a distortion of her place and balance in the world. She had to clutch at the stonework of the bridge or she’d have toppled sideways.

Saranja’s voice.

“Maja! What’s up? That was the sheep-bell. Come along. Are you all right?”

“I think the Watchers have come. Back at the pasture. I didn’t feel them coming. They were just there.”

“Right. Let’s get on with it.”

Maja steadied herself and rose.

The small flock streamed by, bewildered by the speed they were being forced to go, with the dog urging the bellwether along in front and Benayu following at the rear, occasionally whacking a rump with his staff. Saranja stepped out of the trees just as the last rank reached her. Maja followed. Benayu whistled and the dog brought the flock to a halt. He looked no less grim than before, but more in control of himself.

“Maja thinks the Watchers have reached the pasture,” she said.

“I know,” said Benayu tonelessly. “Two of them. If he gets it wrong we’ve got about ten minutes—maybe a bit more.”

“Ribek says there’s a strange hawk over the hillside. The river told him.”

“Wasn’t there before I got under the trees, but from now on…One of them will be looking through its eyes. So you can’t take the horse through the village—stand out like a sore thumb. I should look all right, with the sheep, this time of year. You’re going to have to work your way round under the trees. Up the river till you get to the old ford. Not far. Then…”

His face worked. He waited, eyes closed, until he had mastered himself, and turned to Maja.

“You know when Saranja took the wings off your horse, what you felt then? There’ll be something like that. Stronger, probably. It’ll mean Fodaro’s trying to tackle the Watchers back at our pasturage. The hawk will be looking at that. You should be able to slip across the river then. After that, there’s a track down from the ford to the top of the drove pasture. I’ll know you’re there and come and find you.”

“All right. And good luck, Benayu.”

“Not me who needs it.”

He turned away and whistled to the dog to move on.

The moment came in two waves, the first like a silent thunderclap, electric with horror and power, flinging Maja to the ground. She heard Rocky’s squeal of panic, but it had hardly begun before the second wave drowned it, an immense booming bellow, far louder than any thunder, a shuddering of the physical earth…And then the wind. She was already flat on her face but that was no shelter at all. It tore at her clothing, yanked at her hair, was about to pick her up and blast her away like a blown leaf when Ribek tumbled across her and pinned her down.

And then it was gone. Silence. No, not silence, because even in silence your ears are awake, listening for sound. There was a blankness, a deadness, where that sense of listening should have been.

She hadn’t heard the wind.

By the time she understood what had happened to her Ribek had rolled himself off her and was helping her up. His lips moved. Nothing.

“I’ve gone deaf,” she said, and pointed to her ears. He nodded and tapped his chest.

Me too.

Saranja was gone, and Rocky, but Saranja’s shoulder pack was lying on the ground. Maya pointed at it.

“Where is she?” she mouthed.

Ribek pointed across the stream.

“Roc-ky bol-ted,” he said, mouthing it the same way, so that she could read his lips.

He picked up the pack but she took it from him and in that awful non-sound helped him across the ford. Beyond that they followed a well-marked track, picking their way past fallen trees. He was leaning heavily on her shoulder by the time Saranja met them, leading Rocky, foam-flecked and heaving, though she herself was barely panting.

She pointed to her ears and Maja and Ribek made the me-too gesture. She nodded and said something, gesturing at Rocky, pointing at a gash in a foreleg, then showing them a ring on his harness, slipping it over her thumb and pointing at the wreckage of branches past which they’d just been scrambling. Rocky had snagged the ring on a broken branch and got stuck till she’d come up. She spoke again, finishing with a nod and a shrug.
Could be worse. He’ll be all right.
Grimly they moved on together.

Benayu came up the track to meet them with Sponge at his heels. His face was gray and haggard as an old man’s. He had clearly been weeping. Ribek moved to put an arm round his shoulders, but he shrugged himself free and started to say something.

“We can’t hear you,” said Maja, automatically.

No doubt they’d all spoken together, but Benayu held up a hand,
wait,
then moved along the line, pausing briefly in front of each of them to reach forward, touch both ears and murmur something with scarcely moving lips. Saranja. Rocky. Ribek. Maja. Swiftly but gently hearing returned, the crash of a falling tree, shouts and screams from the village below. Acrid smoke reeked in the wind—something down there must have caught fire.

“Won’t the Watchers have felt that?” said Saranja.

“They’re gone,” said Benayu in a choking voice. “Give me your right hands.”

He placed their three hands together and closed his own round them, above and below. His voice steadied, becoming harsh and slow.

“I will help you to find the Ropemaker,” he said. “I promise you this, because I promised Fodaro, but not for his reasons, not for yours. I will do it so that I can take vengeance on the Watchers. I will destroy them, every man and woman of them, because they destroyed him. That is the only thing that matters. If I have to destroy the whole Empire, or give it over to the Pirates, if magic vanishes from the world, let it happen, so long as the Watchers are destroyed and vanish too.”

“I understand,” said Ribek, not simply humoring or comforting, but instantly accepting the impossible vow as sane and serious. Saranja only grunted sympathetically. She knew what it was like to hate. Maja felt differently again. Until now Benayu had been for her and the other two little more than a chance-met stranger, friendly and helpful, whom she expected to thank and say good-bye to soon, and never to see again. Now she and Ribek and Saranja and Benayu were linked together, and were going to have to learn to live and endure with each other in friendship and trust for as long as their task demanded.

“We’ll help you if we can,” said Saranja.

They stood together for a while in silence, with the smashed woods all around them, as if allowing their oath to root itself steadfastly into the soil of their purpose, until Ribek seemed to grow restless and began to limp to and fro, studying the sky between the remaining branches.

“I think the hawk’s pushed off,” he said. “Or been done for along with the Watchers.”

Benayu hauled himself out of the dream of vengeance.

“That makes things easier,” he said, in a quiet, toneless voice. “Well, we’ve got a choice. The obvious thing is to get as far away from here as we can before the Watchers…No, forget it. They won’t send more Watchers, not at once, in case the same thing happens to them. They’ll try and find out from a distance. Or they’ll send someone they can afford to lose. So we’ve got a bit of time….”

“Ribek’s got to rest his leg,” said Saranja. “He isn’t up to anything more today.”

“All right,” said Benayu. “I left the sheep with Sponge down at the drove pasture. They’ll give us a reason for being there. We’d be more conspicuous sleeping out in the open, anyway, and some of the huts haven’t been smashed up. No one else is using it.

“And we’ve got to have something to eat. The village was pretty smashed up too when I came through, but there’s a farmer just below it who’s a bit further from the blast, so he should be all right. I’ll go straight down and see him and get him to come up and look at the sheep in the morning. If I let him have a couple for himself he’ll look after the rest while I’m away. With luck he’ll sell me something for supper.”

“Any chance of some decent fodder for Rocky?” said Saranja. “He’ll want more than hay. I’ll bring him with you so that he can carry it back.”

“I’ll ask the farmer. I don’t want to do any more magic than I have to. It’s a nuisance screening things and then getting rid of the traces.”

Two of the five drove huts had been blasted flat. The pasture sloped away below them, with the village on their left and its fields spreading on down the hill. Some of the houses had lost roofs and chimneys. Beyond the fields more woods, much less shattered, reached into the distance, and further off still the snow-topped peaks through which Rocky had carried his riders that morning now glistened untroubled under the setting sun. He nosed and snuffled contentedly into the feed that Benayu had bought from the farmer, while the humans sat, or in Ribek’s case lay, round the small fire Saranja had built. She and Maja were roasting gobbets of liver on pointed sticks and Ribek, flat on his back but looking a bit better now, chewed happily on his, but Benayu remained silent and hunched, gazing into the fire while he nibbled abstractedly at a morsel Saranja had bullied him into accepting.

At last he shook himself into the here and now, stuffed what was left of the liver into his mouth, chewed purposefully at it until he could swallow it, drank a mouthful of water and spoke in a low, anxious voice.

“I don’t understand it,” he said. “There’s a colossal explosion of magic, two of the Watchers get wiped out, and they still haven’t sent anyone to find out what happened.”

“Would we know?” said Saranja.

“I would if it was more Watchers,” said Maja. “I didn’t feel them coming. They were suddenly there, just before the explosion. They were horrible.”

“I didn’t either,” said Benayu. “We had a system—it worked back up on the hillside, when we first realized they were coming. They must have picked that up and canceled it somehow. Perhaps that’s what took them so long…. Anyway, it’s going to be dark soon. We’d better get the fire out.”

“I’ll do that,” said Maja, and began carefully to rake it apart.

“What did happen?” said Saranja, but Benayu shook his head.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” he said wearily. “I’m not trying to be all mysterious about it because I’m a magician, but a lot of it’s stuff it’s dangerous to know. Really dangerous. Not just dangerous to you, dangerous to everybody—everybody in the Empire, anyway. If the Watchers get hold of you they won’t just kill you. They’ll take you apart, find out everything about you, all you’ve ever done, all you know. And if they find out some of the stuff Fodaro discovered they’ll become even more powerful than they are now—far more—and there’ll be nothing they can’t do, and nothing to stop them doing it.

“That’s why Fodaro died. He didn’t do it for our sake. He took two of the Watchers with him for our sake, to help us get away. But he died for the whole world’s sake so that they couldn’t find out what he knew.

“But I’ll tell you as much as I can because…well, I suppose because I’ve got to talk to you about Fodaro. He was a very good man—too good to be a good magician, really. He was only an ordinary third-level magician, but he was a pretty good scholar. He knew a lot more than he could do, he used to say. And on top of that he was a genius.

“Mathematics was his thing. And astronomy, I suppose. I built that pool up there for him. He told me what he wanted but he couldn’t do it himself, so I did it. It was his way of looking at the stars.

“But for him the astronomy was only part of the mathematics. He said that if you want to find the how and why of anything you have to measure everything you can about it so that you can put it into numbers, and then you work out how the numbers fit and put that into an equation, and then you can use them to understand the real world and do things in it. You can get an equation that’s almost right, and it’ll work well enough until you run into something that doesn’t fit. Then you either have to change your equation or start all over again.

“Magic is stuff that oughtn’t to fit in the real world….”

“I’ve always said it was nonsense,” said Saranja.